Late, Late in the Evening by Stephen Grant

Author:Stephen Grant
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: crime, dystopia, adultery, survival, britain, jewish character, authoritarian regime
Publisher: Propertius Press

Chapter Thirteen

He looks at the message again, assuming he has made a mistake. It is the first time she has ever specified a car other than the Jaguar, and it is the first time anyone has requested the Bentley. The Duke insisted on a Rolls on the two occasions when he attended an event in the area, and as he has come to know some of the staff who live in the main house, he has agreed to take some of them out in the cars when he drives around the estate. During a trip in the Mercedes, the curator of Arlingham’s vast art collection reminisces about a childhood journey from London to The Cotswolds with his grandfather in the same type of car. The sous-chef asks sheepishly if she may sit in the rear seat of the Phantom and smiles in delight when he opens the door and waits ceremoniously for her to get in. He wondered initially if they were syns, but their behaviour is so far at odds with any of the digital responses he has ever seen that this seems impossible. There are about fifteen of them, all performing tasks that could be carried out by syns. Two cooks, valets for cleaning and pressing clothes, diary secretaries, someone to manage the library, IT technicians and the art historian from the Mercedes to look after the picture collection. They clearly weren’t there purely as a means of tickling The Duke’s ego, but because there is something emotionally necessary in the belief that one is with other humans. The immensity of the house means that a collection of syns can be secreted away, emerging only at night to silently dust and clean the bulk of the house using noiseless vacuums.

When he pulls up in front of the main entrance, Caroline comes down the steps and is quickly followed by Helena and Fatima, each carrying an overnight bag. He drives them to the station and waits in the car as Caroline accompanies them onto the platform, waiting with them for fifteen minutes before the train arrives to smoothly whisk them away from Arlingham. He watches them through the white picket fence, and sees the honest, childish excitement to the way in which they speak and laugh together. Even without knowing the content of what they are saying, he yearns for a world in which he could be that unguarded with others, one where every moment of joy or relief was not tempered by either looking over his shoulder or the memory of what he had lost. Though they too have suffered, they still seem to have something he is missing.

When Caroline returns to the car, he sees that she is also distracted by the experience of being with them. “Ungrateful little bitches couldn’t wait to get rid of me. Helena almost forgot to say goodbye.”

“Where are they going?”

“Her counsellor has been saying for months that she should try to get out of the house more and do different things. Fatima has got her interested in classic French cinema, and there’s a retrospective in Brighton.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.